The Biden administration is trying to manage the fallout from leaked classified intelligence documents that began circulating online last week.
Photographs of pages of paper documents that appear to have been unfurled have appeared on social media, with some of the material containing details of daily updates provided to senior Pentagon leaders on operations in Ukraine, as well as other updates from intelligence, according to a report. Pentagon official.
CBS News has reviewed a series of slides so far as the US government continues to try to remove them from social media. Some include charts and maps of the state of Russia’s war in Ukraine in March. Others show combat sustainability assessments and an analysis of Ukraine’s air defenses.
Information about South Korea was also leaked from the Pentagon, according to CBS News’ review of the slides. On Monday night, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-seop to discuss the leaked military secrets and said he would communicate closely with him and cooperate with the Korean government on this issue, according to South Korea’s defense ministry. . South Korea’s presidential office issued a statement on “suspected wiretapping by the US government” that said of the conversation between Austin and Lee that the two had “agreed that “a number important of the relevant documents were”. forged.'”
Asked by reporters Monday whether the national security threat has been contained, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied: “We don’t know. We really don’t know.”
The Biden administration is still unsure of the extent of the document leak and does not yet know who is behind it. The Department of Justice, at the request of the Department of Defense, has opened a criminal investigation.
The Pentagon has not verified that the photos in the documents are authentic, and officials noted that some of them appeared doctored. But they also confirmed that some of the slides appear to contain classified information.
Chris Meagher, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, told reporters on Monday that “the photos appear to show documents in a format similar to those used to provide daily updates to our senior leaders on operations related to Ukraine and Russia, as well as other intelligence upgrades.”
“A Pentagon team continues to review and assess the veracity of photographic documents circulating on social media that in some cases appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material,” Meagher said.
Meagher declined to confirm the authenticity of specific documents. But Kirby said at least some of the material appeared to be altered.
“We know some of them have been tampered with,” Kirby said. “I’m not going to talk about the validity of all the documents, the ones that don’t immediately look tampered with. We’re still working on the validity of all the documents that we know are out there.”
The Pentagon is leading an interagency effort to analyze the impact of the leak on US national security and on US allies.
Kirby said the president has been briefed on the leak and was updated throughout the weekend. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been speaking with senior leaders daily about the unauthorized disclosures, Meagher said Monday.
For now, the administration is being cautious about what it says publicly about the leak.
“I think we just have to be careful right now speculating or guessing what might be behind or who might be behind what appears to be a potential leak of classified information here,” Kirby said. “We have to let the process play out.”
Margaret Brennan contributed to this report.
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